Alzheimer's Treatment Decreases Plaques, Improves Cognition

James VitaleThursday, September 8, 2016

Researchers at Biogen published a pivotal Phase 1b clinical study of an Alzheimer's treatment showing not only a decrease in plaques when the monoclonal antibody aducanumab is administered, but also some cognitive improvement in humans.

From the paper:

"Antibody-based immunotherapy against Αβ to trigger its clearance or mitigate its neurotoxicity has so far been unsuccessful.
Here we report the generation of aducanumab, a human monoclonal antibody that selectively targets aggregated Αβ.
In a transgenic mouse model of AD, aducanumab is shown to enter the brain, bind parenchymal Αβ, and reduce soluble and insoluble Αβ in a dose-dependent manner.
In patients with prodromal or mild AD, one year of monthly intravenous infusions of aducanumab reduces brain Αβ in a dose- and time-dependent manner.
This is accompanied by a slowing of clinical decline measured by Clinical Dementia Rating-Sum of Boxes and Mini Mental State Examination scores."

Preclinical research was performed on a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease, Tg2576, which carries a transgene coding for human Alzheimer β-amyloid (Αβ) precursor protein.